By Nury Vittachi

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Judge bans girl from Internet

Plus a list of other people who should be locked out

A WOMAN HAS been banned from the Internet. Melissa D Brandon, 26, used photos of a beauty queen to make a fake Facebook page in which she asked for money, causing a judge in Saskatoon, US, to sentence her to the unusual punishment recently. I had no idea you could ban people from the Internet and wish this punishment was used WAY more often.

I caught a creepy stranger on my Facebook friends list using images of a cute, young female Japanese model as a profile picture, so I copied an article about Ms Brandon’s crime and punishment and pasted it on that person’s wall. Somewhere, a horrible middle-aged man is quickly deleting a lot of files. Heh heh heh heh.

A person reading over my shoulder STOP DOING THAT has just pointed out that Iran is attempting to ban its entire population from the Internet, and China has banned its 1.4 billion citizens from all the most popular bits: Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, etc. So I guess banning people from cyberspace is more common than I thought.

People who SHOULD be banned from the internet:

1) Anyone who tags a photo on Facebook with the name of someone not in the photo.

2) Anyone who ends any communication with: “Forward this to 10 people or your crush will ignore you for a week”.

3) Anyone who posts a list in which each item is on a separate screen.

4) Everyone under 11. Go run around in the park, it’s good for you.

5) Come to think of it, everyone over 11. Go run around in the park, it’s good for you.

***

THE CITIZENS of the UK are in an uproar because some of their supermarket packages of minced dead animal contained minced dead animal, but not the precise one named on the package. From an Asian point of view this is dumb. In many countries in this region, things are just labeled “Veg” and “Non-Veg”. As long as the “non-veg” doesn’t consist of the guy down the hall, what’s the complain about?

***

WASN’T IT cool that the Pope announced his resignation in Latin, so that all reporters missed the tale except one who spoke the dead language? From now on, I am going to make all my announcements in Latin. Here are some useful phrases so you can do the same.

1) At the bar:

“Di! Ecce hora! Uxor mea me necabit!”

(“Dear God, look at the time! My wife will kill me!”)

2) On the street:

“Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!”

(“Stand aside plebians! I am on imperial business.”)

3) At home:

“Mellita, domi adsum.”

(“Honey, I'm home.”)

Incidentally, if Latin-speakers want to insult each other really nastily, they don’t shout crude expletives. The most horrible curse in Latin is this:

“Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.”

(“May faulty logic undermine your entire philosophy.”)

My kinda people.

***

THE PLAYMOBIL people have made a new US$60 set of toy figurines for children aged 4 up, and the theme is armed robberies. Not a joke. Your kids get a little masked robber character with a detachable gun, and a banker with a tiny safe full of money. Did this toy company miss 2008? Isn’t that when the world learned that the bankers were the robbers?

***

INCIDENTALLY, THANKS to SJ for the comment following yesterday’s post on Hong Kong walkways that someone should make a useable map of them. Good idea—anyone fancy having a go? Also, thanks to genius inventor Karuna for the news that he is making something electronic to prevent us getting lost, with a launch planned for the summer.